The origins of the food crises of the middle Ages

Abstract

The objective of this article is to evaluate and/or analyze the role that each factor may have played, from the role of so-called "natural determinism" to purely biological factors, including anthropic factors, and not forgetting the religious factor. The work attempts to determine the nuances that should be brought to any attempt to approach the factors of food crisis in the Middle Ages. In other words, these factors of food crisis are both varied and complex.

It is also a question of questioning the strong attachment of populations to cereals (wheat, rye, oats, barley, etc.). But first, as a prelude, the work takes stock of traditional and recent questions about the origins of past food crises. It also opens, at the end of the section, a research perspective on the forms of recourse in times of food crisis.

Key word: Crisis, Food, Factor, Climate, Biology, Epidemic, War.